Prague Castle

I’m on a roll!

Saturday morning (the 25th) we woke up early to do some sight seeing. The first main destination was Prague Castle, this area on the hill, with the big cathedral guy:




This was the palace and seat of government for the area since the Holy Roman Empire. In more recent times, Buddy Barrack had just been up there to give a speech.

To get to this Palace we had to walk over the bridge you also see in the pictures. “The Charles Bridge”, as it’s called, was built by Charles IV and is a pedestrian only crossing with a number of really cool statues. Here's the tower




And the view from the bridge:




It’s a big tourist attraction and, unlike most other attractions in Prague, I was surprised that it was free. As a free site it was swamped with tourists and “tourist vampires”, the people that sell paintings and jewelry and draw caricature pictures of tourists all over the entire planet everywhere! It got on my nerves. As I said before, the statues were pretty cool:







You don’t see many depictions of the crucifixion in which one of the Christ’s arms is still stuck to the cross, even as they bring him down.

We took a short detour to check out this church:



There was a chicken statue:



The insides were pretty standard as churches in this area go, but it was interesting to read about some of the stuff and see how Communism and the time after have impacted the church. For the most part things were in mild disrepair with some artifacts and sculptures straight up missing. Sad.

From the church to the palace. It started to drizzle, just a little.



This is the Cathedral there, the one you see from far away:



We didn't end up going in because there was a really long line and you had to pay to see all the buildings and things on the castle grounds.

This is the entrance to the royal palace:



As we got up there they were doing the changing of the guard. I only snapped one picture quickly:



On the other side of the castle was a vineyard where we paused to check out the view:




From the vineyard we swung around to the northern part of the castle where the other church and monastery are:





From the castle we wandered our way uphill towards an Eiffel-Tower-looking viewing tower. There was a building with a mirror maze and hall of mirrors. It was actually kind of lame and definitely a tourist trap. Oh well.





By this point it was probably 2 PM and we were very hungry. We worked our way down the hill, stopping periodically along the way to check out the view:





At the bottom we found a little Panera-esque restaurant where we bought some desserts (a fine lunch indeed) and went over to a park to eat. We found this too:




After lunch we felt energized enough to go and climb the hill on the north side of town, where the old Stalin statue once stood. We traveled for a time along the banks of the river where, to our surprise and horror, we watched a group of ducks attacking another by biting its head. We tried to help the victim duck but the street was probably ten feet above the banks of the river so we could not go down to chase the ducks away. All we could do was throw things, like coins and rocks, at the attackers to try and scare them off. It didn't really work.

The plaza on the hill where Stalin once stood has begun to crumble as rain and skateboarders wear it down. That's right, skateboarders. I found it very interesting to see how a monument to communist dictatorship was now little more than a set of stairs and plazas that were really good for skateboard tricks.

The plaza offered more nice views:




Delightful.

From the hilltop we walked back to our hostel to rest a bit and figure out our evening plans. Once said plans had been made Steve went off to shower while Brad and I went off to find this church:


I'm almost done here, I swear!

Prague Spring, Minus the Soviets

My loyal blog-followers: I’m now on a train back from Berlin, which I intend to tell you all about very soon, but I must instead turn my attention to catch-up work. I do this only because the Berlin pictures are on my camera and not yet my computer. At any rate, Prague was cool too.

So Prague. That all started on Friday April 24 and went until Sunday, the 26th.

This is how we got there. We found ourselves are really solid set of bus tickets too and from Prague that were probably the cheapest way there and much faster than the train, strangely enough. I’m still rather shocked that a 3.5 hour car ride takes 6 hours by train, but I guess it’s not very direct. Anyway, the now three of us, me, Brad, and Steve (or Stefan or “Erdbeer Joghurt!”) hoped on this cramped little bus to head over to the town that’s been hyped up to levels like “The Paris of the East”. I might have just made that up though.

We left Munich at 8 AM that Friday.

On the bus we met two girls from Munich headed on over to meet family in the Czech Republic. One of them spoke fluent Czech and was teaching us how to say some things and pronounce some things. We had fun trying to say the names of things for the entire rest of our time in Prague. I’ve also resolved to start trying to shorten the words I write by using special characters from different languages. In Czech the character “č” is pronounced just like our “ch” and I intend to use it so, at least for the purpose of these Prague-y posts (and if I remember).

And then, we were in Prague. On the way in we drove by this building, though I didn’t get a čance to snap a picture. Here is one from the internet:



It’s supposed to look like two people dancing.

From the bus stop we walked our way over to the hostel, through the old part of town. These are the pictures:



This is the Astronomical Clock, which replicates the motion of the sun and moon and stars:




This is the "Church of Our Lady before Týn":



It was closed for service when I went to go see it on Sunday. We did go into this churh:



The insides looked like this:




After settling into our hostel, we headed back out to find some lunč and explore a little bit. The girl at the hostel front desk told us about some foods, drinks, and restaurants that were worth trying and we spent the rest of our culinary time in Prague trying to track these down.

While exploring we found a statue dedicated to Franz Kafka:



It was not a cockroač. Sad.

It began to drizzle. Wet and hungry we ducked into a little place on a side street for some čeese, sausage, and Pilsner Beer from Pilsn, a town in the Česck Republic and inventor of the type. Tasty.

After wandering about for a bit in the rain we decided to go inside a museum or something to stay dry and occupied. Our čoice was naturally the “Museum of Communism”, where we found these guys:




The museum was actually pretty interesting, covering the history of Communism in Czechoslovakia as well as what life was like under the regime. It did seem like the museum itself wasn’t very well established, however, because it shared the building with a casino and generally seemed really out of place. It was also right next to a big McDonald’s

The museum told us about a statue of Stalin, constructed in the late 50’s, that once stood 30 m tall (that’s 10 stories!) above the north bank of the river, overlooking the city. Unfortunately, in Khrushchev’s wave of de-Stalinization, it was destroyed. That would have been hilarious to see. Oh well

This is what it looked like then:



On the way back we saw this:



It’s probably a symbolic representation of the modern history of this town, one of perpetual tanks and bulldozers or, one of construction and repression (think Prague Spring!). I don’t really know though.

That was not too bad. More tomorrow tomorrow.

"I think this snow might start to become a problem when we get higher up..."

Thursday, the 25th, Brad and I ventured out into the Alps to have a go at mountain climbing. I decided to take us out to the town of Mittenwald, about an hour and a half south of Munich, after hearing stories from the full-year students about a hike they took back in September and how much they all enjoyed it.

We left a little bit late that morning and had to catch the train an hour later than I had originally planned.

Upon arrival we looked eastward and saw this, our foe for the day:



Incidentally, the "mountain" that the JYMers climbed in September was really a hill on the other side of the valley from this very real very tall mountain.

We went into town briefly to get some lunch supplies for on the mountain and then crossed the river to get to the start of the trails.




They way up was kinda steep, not the worst I've climbed but certainly very tiring. There were switch-backs, but they were frequent and not terribly flat or well kept.
I also haven't really climbed a mountain in a while so part of it may have been that.

There were some nice views, like this one of Mittenwald:




Or this:



We found a memorial to someones uncle Adolf:



It says: "Many go but few actually see how nature arises and passes by. From 8-21-1969 on will our uncle Adolf Ohler stay here forever, in his beloved mountain."

All was going along as we had planned and we were making pretty good time. Soon we started finding snow here and there along the trail. As time went on we found more and more snow.




At some point along the way I muttered something about how the snow would probably start getting troublesome as we climbed higher. I had know idea I would be so right:




The snow ran up and down the mountain in drifts which we had to cross now and again. The drifts were at least 2 or 3 meters deep, if not more, and not always solidly packed. Every fifth step or so I took on the snow would plunge me waist deep into the wet snow.



After our first snow crossing we were emboldened to continue on our way and see what we could find, though I was starting to seriously doubt if we would ever make it up the mountain. The drifts did seem pretty dangerous, but they were usually short. We resolved to head back if we ever ran into something that seemed to treacherous or unmanageable.



We eventually made it to another overlook where we broke to eat some of the strawberries and raisins we had brought up from town.




Just after this overlook the path became narrower and much less well defined. Rockslides were apparently a problem here:



I enjoyed the wording on this because, literally translated, it says: "Watch out! Danger of being battered/beaten by rocks!"

Not long after this the path started to disappear. We were able to make out it's course for a short time but soon found ourselves on the side of a steep slope with snow blocking the way as far as we could see and no sign of the actual path. It was here that we realized we had reached the end of our climb, far from the top of the mountain.



They way back down was fairly uneventful and routine since we had already easily tackled the snow drifts on the way up. By this time our feet were soaked from all the snow that had melted into our boots when we stepped in deep snow.

And that was it. We tried to climb a mountain, stopped well short of the peak, but had ourselves quite the adventure in the meantime. And it's not like the views were anything to complain about.




Oh goodness.

On the train ride back we were stopped by passport controllers and asked to show our ID's. The train we were on was coming from Innsbruck Austria, meaning one would need a passport to travel over the border, but we had never left Germany. Once we explained that it wasn't any problem. I ended up talking to one of them briefly while the other made a call. I told him about our hiking and about all the snow. To that he said something like: "Hiking in the mountains here is really great, but it's probably a little early in the year to be doing that."

No kidding.